Bridge Builder, Fence Mender & Friend to the Friendless

Spending as much time as I do in the political arena, I all too often hear friends or family members generalize, stereotype and say something akin to, "You can't trust any politician.  They are all only out for themselves."

 

Thankfully and simply put, that just is NOT true. And here is one who has been in public service for more than four decades, and counting..

 

I first encountered Michael Thurmond as a young State Legislator from Athens, Georgia at our state Capitol.  He was then a kind, humorous, humble as well as an incredibly able strategist, author, public servant and politician...and he remains all those things and more to this day.  Thurmond's beginnings in rural Clarke County were quite humble, he grew up in a large family, the son of a sharecropper and vegetable truck merchant, Sid Thurmond.

 

 

After an impressive career in public school, and as first in his family to graduate college as well as later receive higher degrees, Thurmond learned early on the benefits of building bridges, versus burning them.  As DeKalb County CEO, he has turned the annual State of the County address into a spotlight on others making a lifetime of contributions to our community.  He calls this honor the Washington W. King Bridge Builder Award, named in honor of the son of a freed slave, and another former resident of Athens, Georgia, who designed, engineered and hand-built wooden covered bridges across the southeast.  Thurmond championed recognition for W.W. King and one of his better known and still standing bridges on the backside of Stone Mountain Park, moved there from Athens, Georgia in the early 1960s, as two floods of the Oconee River had damaged the bridge and its moorings.

 

Thanks to the efforts of Thurmond, and the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, the W.W. King Bridge is now on the National Register of Historic Places.  The three Bridge Builders for 2023 are former DeKalb Schools Superintendent Yvonne Tinsley, banker and businessman Jim Miller and minority entrepreneur, mentor and fellow public servant, R.L. Brown.  Though the event was Thurmond's, he was all too generous with sharing credit, praise and that spotlight.

 

 

After his work restoring accreditation to the DeKalb County School District while serving as Superintendent of Schools, and  also turning an operating deficit into a $100-million surplus, Thurmond set his sights on the role of DeKalb CEO, and bringing together a county increasingly divided.  Attending a fundraiser in the backyard of former DeKalb CEO Liane Levetan, there were over two dozen current and former Mayors of various DeKalb municipalities present, and all there to support Thurmond.  This may not sound all that impressive, but in my home county in recent decades, a DeKalb CEO was more likely to be meeting a DeKalb Mayor of one city or another at a venue in court.

 

Relationships are being reset, fences mended, and work remains to be done, but broken fences do not rebuild themselves.

 

 

Most recently, serving on the board of a modest nonprofit, providing homelessness prevention services and affordable housing to nearly 500 residents and families across DeKalb County, in four different multi-family communities, the Initiative for Affordable Housing, Inc., had been working for more than two-decades to convert an aging HUD loan into a grant, around the restoration, combination and management of 140 affordable housing units at the Sol Luna Apartments on Memorial Drive.  Three DeKalb CEO's and administrations had come and gone, the required decade of maintaining the property as affordable housing had expired, and yet the wheels of bureaucracy somehow grinded to a halt, leaving the Initiative with a horribly expensive, floating construction mortgage loan and rate on an aging property.

 

As interest rates surged, and the now 20-year construction loan was facing a critical balloon payment, Thurmond kick-started things in the right direction.  The loan was converted to a grant, and housing for nearly 500 of DeKalb's low, lower and lowest income residents was saved.  Thanks also to DeKalb CAO Zach Williams, Deputy County Attorney Matt Welch and Housing Authority of DeKalb County President and CEO Pete Walker for getting all the 'i's' dotted and the 't's' crossed and the necessary paperwork completed. 

 

Running a government serving 750,000 or so residents, and with a budget greater than the City of Atlanta is no easy task.  We won't have him in this chair forever, but I for one, as well as for many, are glad that we have Michael Thurmond as DeKalb County's CEO now.